The World Table

An interactive culinary compendium: recipes, lexicon and study

Indiana · Dessert

Indiana Persimmon Pudding

  • Intermediate
  • 1 h 30 m
  • roughly 2 of 4 for cost
  • Vegetarian

rich · warm-spiced Leads with richness that coats and comforts, warm spice humming through the middle.

Ingredients

  • 500g wild persimmon pulp
  • 200g sugar
  • 2 eggs
  • 250ml buttermilk
  • 125g flour
  • 1 tsp baking soda
  • 1 tsp baking powder
  • 1 tsp cinnamon
  • 55g butter, melted
  • 250ml milk
  • Pinch of salt
  • Whipped cream to serve

The skills inside

Straining & passing through a sieve

The words inside

Fuyu PersimmonHachiya Persimmon

Allergen screen

Found: gluten · dairy · egg

Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.

Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.

Method

  1. Push very ripe persimmons through a sieve for smooth pulp: under-ripe fruit is unbearably astringent.
  2. Beat the pulp with the sugar and eggs, then the buttermilk and melted butter.
  3. Whisk the flour, soda, baking powder, cinnamon, and salt and stir in, then thin with the milk to a loose batter.
  4. Pour into a buttered dish and bake at 175C for 55-65 min until set and deeply browned, the edges pulling from the sides. 65 min
  5. Cool and serve in squares with whipped cream.

How to tell it is going right

This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the technique it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.

Straining & passing through a sieve 148 recipes

  • Nothing solid got through: a finger drawn through what came out finds no fibre, seed, skin, curd, or grit.
  • Where the dish wants body it was worked through rather than left to drip, and the solids left in the mesh are spent and dry rather than still holding liquid worth having.
  • It is judged on the tongue rather than by eye: smooth, with no residual grain left behind after the mouthful has gone.
  • The mesh was fine enough for the job and held its shape, and nothing bypassed it by going over the rim.
  • The yield is close to what went in less the spent solids: not half of it abandoned in the sieve because it stopped running and nobody pushed.

Where it goes wrong It was pushed through a mesh too coarse for it, or the sieve was overloaded and slopped at the rim, so the fibres it was meant to remove are in the finished sauce and it reads grainy on the tongue.

At the Table

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The sweetness rule is absolute: the pour must be sweeter than the plate, and acid keeps it from cloying.

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Film school

This dish, cooked on camera Search films of Indiana Persimmon Pudding Search YouTube: J. Kenji López-Alt on Indiana Persimmon Pudding A YouTube search for J. Kenji López-Alt and this dish. No affiliation.